After Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Power and Tata Teleservices, Cyrus Mistry has joined the board of Tata Steel as an additional director.
Mistry, who would succeed Ratan Tata as the chairman of Tata Sons in December, would be joined by Mallika Srinivasan, chairperson of Tractors and Farm Equipment Ltd, the company said in a filing to the BSE.
Mistry is the deputy chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the diversified salt-to-software Tata Group. He joined the board of Shapoorji Pallonji and Company as a director in 1991 and was appointed as the managing director of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group in 1994.
Tata Steel last week posted bigger-than-expected drop in fourth-quarter profit, hit by weak prices and lower volumes in its main European market. Europe accounts for around two-thirds of sales and production for the steelmaker, which has an annual capacity of 28 million tonnes.
It posted a nearly 90 per cent drop in consolidated net profit at Rs 433 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, despite a marginal increase in income. The company, the world’s seventh-largest steel producer, had clocked Rs 4,176 crore net profit in the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year.
Mistry’s induction would be interesting against the backdrop of Tata’s comments that it would be up to Cyrus to decide if he wanted to become the chairman of Tata Motors and Tata Steel.